Random Pics

Aislinn's First Bike Ride




















She was lovin' this...




















Aislinn's first moment of fame!




















Worn out

















Our cousin, TJ and his new wife, Lindsay, with Aislinn




















Aidan and Elyse hangin' with their good buddies, Jas and Paris
















Coach Hawkins















Elyse's "Muffin Man" dance class pic
(she's just to the left of the boy in the middle)

With Others

Read in my devotional time today, from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Here and Now:

One of the discoveries we make in prayer is that the closer we come to God, the closer we come to all our brothers and sisters in the human family. God is not a private God. The God who dwells in our inner sanctuary is also the God who dwells in the inner sanctuary of each human being. As we recognize God’s presence in our own hearts, we can also recognize that presence in the hearts of others, because the God who has chosen us as a dwelling-place gives us the eyes to see the God who dwells in others. When we see only demons within ourselves,, we can see only demons in others, but when we see God within ourselves, we can see God also in others.
This might sound rather theoretical, but when we pray, we will increasingly experience ourselves as part of a human family infinitely bound by God who created us to share, all of us, in the divine light.
We often wonder what we can do for others, especially for those in great need. It is not a sign of powerlessness when we say: “We must pray for one another.” To pray for one another is, first of all, to acknowledge, in the presence of God, that we belong to each other as children of the same God. Without this acknowledgement of human solidarity, what we do for one another does not flow from who we truly are. We are brothers and sisters, not competitors or rivals. We are children of one God, not partisans of different gods.
To pray, that is, to listen to the voice of the One who calls us the “beloved,” is to learn that this voice excludes no one. Where I dwell, God dwells with me and where God dwells with me I find all my sisters and brothers. And so intimacy with God and solidarity with all people are two aspects of dwelling in the present moment that can never be separated.

I love this. For me, it helps to explain so much. How Jesus saw so intimately into the hearts of those He encountered. How God's Spirit inside us can prompt us to pray for someone in need. How we can experience a glimpse of God's broken-heartedness over the plight of His creation. How we can see into the heart of another's sadness or depression or grief with unexplainable insight. How we can feel such a strong bond with those who are physically far from us, but in spirit, so near we almost feel their heart beating within our chest. How we can weep with those we have never met and laugh with those we newly meet on the street.

We are all children of our Creator. We are all lost. We are all, whether it appears this way or not, looking for our Father, our Home, our Rest. We should be boosting each other up over the wall rather than scrambling and scratching to find our own way up. It would make life a lot easier. And more joyful. And, well, a lot more fun.

But, wow, how convicting: When we see only demons within ourselves, we can see only demons in others, but when we see God within ourselves, we can see God also in others. God, help me to see You within myself, so that I can more easily see You in others!

Stick Family

Have you seen this? How cute! Go to ourstickfamily.com to make your own!

As easy as riding a bike...

In the last two weeks, Elyse has learned how to ride her bicycle without training wheels. And Aidan has learned to pedal his bicycle.
They've loved going up and down our street, usually surrounded by a band of kids riding wildly on their own bikes. I snapped a couple of pictures the other night.

A Day in the Life of Gluten-Free Living

Being that it is Labor Day and all, I myself decided to labor. For my gluten-free baking, I use five different flour mixes depending on what I'm making. So, for sandwich bread and pizza crust, I use my "Soft White Bread Mix." For biscuits and sopapillas, I use a sorghum/corn flour mix. For pancakes, waffles and cookies I use my "Wonder Bread Mix." These three I was completely out of. (I also have a "brown rice flour mix" for certain recipes, and a "bread flour mix" containing millet and sorghum flours that I use for french, italian, and sub sandwich breads.) So, since measuring out the very fine flours that go into these mixes always makes for a mess, I decided to spend the afternoon and have a massive flour mix-making party to get them all done at one time.
As I was measuring and pouring, I started wondering about how much stuff I was actually using, so let me share with you a few statistics:
*10 empty bags of ingredients
*40 cups of ingredients
*9 different types of flour (white rice, brown rice, sweet rice, cornstarch, tapioca starch, potato starch, corn flour, sorghum flour, almond flour)

And here is what my kitchen looks like after the dirty deed.



And here is the beautiful finished product. Forty cups of flour that will last me maybe 1-2 months.



And Josh's labor for the day? Putting up the doors on our pantry cabinets! Don't they look great?!? (Aidan's checking out the washing machine hoses..."just looking, mom!" he told me...)

I love internationals!

Today Josh and I got to teach the English language learner's Bible Study at our church. Our regular Sunday school class is the Cross-Cultural Discipleship class where we get to discuss the Word with people from all over the globe and is such a learning time for us! I've taught ESL before when I volunteered with World Relief when we lived in Fort Worth. I LOVED working with my Cuban refugee friends and I'm so glad for the opportunity to get involved in similar service again!
This morning we taught a gentlemen who is a visiting professor at OSU from South Korea. He is here for a year working on an engineering research project with another Korean professor involved in the Discipleship class. He has good academic knowledge of English but needs help with his conversation. We are going through the book of Luke and it is a learning experience studying the Bible with someone whose culture and language is so different from your own and from the Jewish culture of the Bible. We were able to meet his wife and teen-aged daughter who came to the main service and I invited them to come to the Bible study also. Neither he nor his daughter are believers, but his wife went to a Catholic church in Korea. They were all very sweet and I look forward to getting to know them better and hopefully getting to teach them English whenever the regular teachers are gone!